Graham Butcher

^^^ None of the places here where Evri etc. do their transferring have any form of charging available. As to the van arriving into the town, nope, we have huge articulated lorries that run from the national hubs in the Midlands out to the various towns dotted across the country and these lorries are powered by diesel. The same is also true for Royal Mail and Parcel Force. Even Amazon Prime, the driver who used to come to me had at one time a 100% electric van, now that van has gone back to being a diesel.

Like the Evri last mile drivers, who have to use their own mode of transport along with many other courier companies who just rent a small warehouse and when the trunk truck arrives, the cages with parcels for that area are unloaded. The last mile drivers spend the morning sifting through the cages looking for postcodes for their routes and then spend time loading them into their cars etc in the order of drops. Most of their cars / vans are old beat up things as they can't afford to buy anything new, they only get paid peanuts per item and hence you hear of some drivers chucking packages over garden gates etc in order to deliver a few more parcels for that extra income. Less than ideal.

Maybe, but you can also substitute laden for towing, eg, tradesman will not only be carrying the materials for the days work but also a quite likely a heavy kit out of tools and standard items such as large drums of cables, etc., as well as a couple of passengers. This is why I was saying we need people making these decisions who actually have some understanding of what is actually required and the conditions that these vans have to work under. I spent a few years working as assistant manager in an independent electrical wholesaler and had a few contractors who had national contracts for shop chains so had to frequently undertake trips of upto 500 to 600 miles in a day delivering all the items required for that particular shop. A BEV would not have even remotely suitable for that kind of work.

Strange thing is, that the video makes the claim the Luton plant actually met it's BEV targets. It cited that the UK government made it easier for them to close it as opposed to any of their other plants worldwide. So much for taking back control, I'd bet that it would still be operational if we had not left the club. 🤔 PS. Many of the Last mile vans that deliver to me, appear to be going back to older diesel vans, food for thought there.

Back on topic again, but it is still bad news for electric vans. Its about time we got someone in power that actually knew something about the subject rather than an idealist.

Although that video is funny, it does raise a few questions. And yes, 15-minute cities are real; some do exist, and I was actually involved with designing schools for one in Oxfordshire a few years ago. Part of them is also the LTNs (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods), and there are lots of those springing up, and the High Court has just ruled that some in London are illegal and are nothing more than cash cows for the local councils. Google for illegal LTNs, and you will find them, but this is getting way off topic now, so let's get back to electric cars.

Well, these are recent figures, 2011, and they must be based on actual live data, and I also have noticed that during my time on this planet I've observed that people do seem to be living longer. When I first started work, after leaving school, I always thought that it was tragic that lots of people who I worked with popped their clogs within 2 to 3 years of retiring. Back then it was retirement at 60 years as well, and very few people bucked that trend. I used to have really bad asthma in my late 20s, and loads of people I knew also had it and would often see them taking regular puffs from their brown and blue inhalers, as did I. Some even had spells in hospital in oxygen tents for a few days at a time; now I can't remember seeing anyone using an inhaler recently. One of my sons also used to carry one and often had to use it; that has not happened now for 20 years. As a past sufferer and someone who worked in an extremely bad environment, a bus garage with the best part of 100+ diesel buses, all with their engines running on cold winter mornings in order to warm them up before allowing fare-paying passengers on board. It was impossible to see from one side of the garage to the other on those mornings, and your eyes would be streaming and stinging from the acrid fumes. So I actually know first-hand from my own experiences and observations that things are not as bad as we are told to believe they are. This is why I keep on about the air quality being very good in the UK, and that is also backed up on the world live data maps of the air quality, the very thing that we are being told is so bad by the authorities. Yes, some of the readings on the map are high, and investigating these a bit more, like the one on the attached map that reads 500, hazardous, reveals that these are either amateur monitors poorly sited or proper official ones also poorly located. By that I mean in close proximity to commercial kitchens where loads of gas is being used for cooking, or very close vents for the London Underground, which I mentioned before about having dangerous levels of pollution. In the case of the one on the map, it is an amateur one and is slap bang in the middle of 4 cafes and a dry cleaners and also close to a railway. It is a dead-end street and so does not have masses of passing traffic. As you will see, other air monitors in the area are recording far lower, as shown in the second map, 1 mile away. We have 2 choices: either believe whatever the authorities choose to tell us that we should believe or do some digging around for ourselves and take note of what our eyes are actually telling us. Personally, I like to do some checking to see if I'm being gaslighted.

I understand all of that, but that does not diminish the reason behind my statement and the feeling that it is removing decades of freedom where we can all choose the type of car that best fits our individual needs. It has not been proved that ICE cars are the devil that that they are being made into. I mean is it not a fact that life expectancy today is considerably longer than it was 100 years ago? Check out this government site. ONS How has life expectancy changed over time? - Office for National Statistics This graph is lifted directly from the above site, so if the air quality and the pollution from ICE vehicles were actually as bad as we are being led to believe, then why is the graph not showing a downward trend instead of a continuing upward trend? We are being told that people are living longer and adding to the huge deficits in public finances because people living longer is placing increased burdens on the funds and the government are not able to cope with that.

Yes I knew that, I was talking about the ban on manuefacturers producing new ICE-powered cars.

Eh? A bit early for April fools jokes 😉. TBH I cannot ever see that happening. However, I can see the relaxation of the ICE ban happening, though.

@lol-lol Let's get some things perfectly straight instead of scoring points with claim and counter-claim all the time? Is it perfectly agreed that apart from the method of propulsion and fuel, the rest of the cars are the same, plastics, fabric, wire, copper, leather, foam, rubber, metal, glass, oil, grease, etc.? Very few car fires involve the fuel, be it petrol or diesel, in the tank; the fuel that is in the tank does not generally become part of the fire. Is the same not true for EV cars? The battery does not normally become part of the fire? Most car fires involve the actual construction of the car and something that the owner/driver is/was doing with the car? Like, smoking or using a dodgy phone charging lead, such as the time my son nearly set my car on fire with a dodgy phone lead that got trapped between his seat and the centre console, and the lead was glowing red hot and scorched the leather seat and melted the plastic on the console? Those things could happen to ANY car type, ICE/EV; they are the same and carry the identical fire risk as the interiors of both are the same. Where the difference comes in is WHEN the fuel in the tank or the fuel in the battery gets to be part of the fire. Liquid fossil fuel: we have had many decades of dealing with that kind of fire, and the fuel tanks are designed to prevent that stored fuel being involved in the fire, just as HV batteries are designed to try and prevent them being part of the fire. That is also one of the benefits of them being mounted below the car and beneath the metal floor. Flames and the heat naturally rise upwards and away from the fuels, so the chances of them being part of the fire are thus greatly reduced. Now comes the undeniable real truths of the matter and anyone who understands chemistry, engineering, and fire should be able to grasp and accept the following concepts, etc. With an ICE car, there is normally only 1 tank, maybe like in some Jags, 2 tanks; with EVs, there is normally only one battery (some cars have a part under the floor and another part under the rear seat, for instance). If an ICE fuel tank develops a leak and lets fuel escape, unless there is a spark or flame in that area, the fuel will not burn, and in the case of petrol, it will just evaporate. If a single cell inside a battery is compromised (either by way of a mechanical means or a manufacturing defect), then that cell creates a short circuit within itself and becomes glowing red hot, and that will be the ignition point and cause the cells next to it also to overheat, and so it goes on. Now Tesla's for example, often use 18650-type cells to make up their batteries, and depending on which model in the range, they have between 5,040 and 8,256 of these cells; thus, that number increases the chances of the equivalent of ICE fuel tank developing a leak per car, so there are between 5,040 and 8,256 chances of a problem happening. I have a Ring-type video doorbell which uses 2 x 18650 lithium-ion cells, and in the last 3 years of owning it, I have had to purchase more cells, as so far 3 of them have failed and never ever become fully charged and also get pretty toasty when being charged, a giveaway sign that they are useless. Thankfully they are not likely to go into thermal runaway, as they are only charged via a normal phone charger, so they are never seeing large currents or voltages, unlike those in an EV, where they would be subjected to both during normal operation. The next real fact is that both petrol and diesel fires are pretty easy to deal with and in most cases the fire brigades can put them out for good within a few minutes, that is not true with EV batteries (note) I said batteries, not EV cars; there is a difference. Currently there is not a properly safe and easily transported and deployable method of dealing with EV batteries, that have gone into thermal runaway following a problem, due to an RTA or an internal cell failure where you have seconds to respond, without the added problem of getting the fire appliances to the scene in time. It has affected insurance premiums, and it is going to increase them even more so in the coming few months. If you are looking for a massive spike in EV premiums as evidence of that, you will be disappointed, as premiums of all cars are increasing to spread that rise about. Can you ever be 100% certain that all RTAs will be EV vs EV, for example? Of course not, so all ICE car owners are also facing increased premiums. Lets face it, if EV premiums were increased on their own and made insuring one cost prohibitive, would anyone buy an EV? Such a move would go against the global narrative of Net Zero, would it not? So that clearly is never going to happen. Oh, and one more thing, which has been totally ignored: nobody is denying that there are more ICE fires than EV, stands to reason, seeing as there are so many more of them around and also far older ones as well, which will not have the same standard of car and attention lavished on them as they age and their value drops, so does that maintenance drop.

Agreed, it is good when critical safety faults are recalled and actually FIXED, rather than a software update, which, judging by other makes with software updates, doesn't actually work in the end. Great in theory to think that a bit code change cures the problem. I'm amazed that people seem to think it is that simple. Have not experienced enough issues with software on their computers and phones, for instance, where there are constant updates being downloaded and installed. With possibly millions of lines of code in the OS, changing a few lines here and there can have negative effects on other lines that get called when certain conditions are met, which trigger a sub-routine somewhere else in the OS to come into play until those conditions are cleared and it reverts to normal. AI on the internet seems to think that UK cars would be involved in the fire recall. So maybe it is Nissan being typical, like the others, and it will do a recall if forced into doing one, in the meantime keeping its head down and fingers crossed that they don't have a fire reported in one of the UK Leafs.

Well, firstly, all cars can go up in flames in equal measures and that guff you quoted about ICE cars being 10 to 20 times more likely is just pure bullsh1t if you actually check it properly. That table that people keep posting, if you check it out, has not altered a jot in all the years it has been published/copied/posted etc. In the early days, yes, it was true simply because of the sheer number of ICE v EV cars, but here's the point, as more EV's are put on the roads and more ICE cars are taken off and scrapped, that balance gets redressed, but NOT according to people like you who stubbornly cling on to fake info from the word go, just so they can puff out their chest and claim that they're doing good for the environment. The real difference between ICE and EV as far as fires go is not which type catches fire more often, but which type has the potential to be more hazardous to the environment and people and which is more difficult to put out and stay out. That particular accolade goes without any shadow of doubt to the EV, fact. Most ICE car fires do not involve the fuel (if the fuel is on fire, it is also far easier to put out), but a lot EV fires originate from its batteries, which are the fuel, hence the massive recalls because of that fire risk, just accept it. Yes the Nissan Leaf has been sold in the US and yes there is a massive recall in the US, although that video claimed 20,000, according to the internet, that is more like 45,000 to be recalled in the US were more 165,000 were sold. Similay here, in the uk it seems that is around 10,000 Leafs being recalled out of 61,000 on the UK roads and there were 270,000 of them produced at Sunderland, so clearly most of them were exported.

Anyone on here with a Renault Zoe?

Agreed, those Mk1 Superbs really did have a soft pillowy ride, I loved mine and also they had the cat's-eye interior lighting at night.

Yes that is true, but more cars now probably have that data transmitted over air in real time, such as Teslas with their over the air update and diagnostic features. Others like my Sons Audi TDI A5 also come their own phone apps that also could be spying so all modern cars could be.

IIRC last year or the year before there was a Jaguar iPace on the M6 that crashed or something, and the driver claimed that the throttle was jammed open, and the police did eventually take him to court over the incident. At the time he was not arrested but it did subsequently emerge that he had been arrested a few days later. So maybe they were able to interrogate the tracking details once they got them from the DFT?

Oh they will know the latter part because the phone will take them and by experience of having a tracking based insurance for 2 years following my old Superb being off when that numpty did a U turn and smased my car up. The car was tracked precisely and could be seen on digital maps on screen, showing the route road by road and the precise time of day and distance travelled So they will know if the car is at the registered address etc.

Erm, it turns out that DFT have been tracking you EV drivers/owners for the last 2 years via your mobile phones so they know how far drive have driven, where you stop to charge and also of course the cost per KWh of that charge. It is only a matter of time before they come clean about the cars themselves have also been gathering similar data ready for the PPM charges as well as road charging according to time of days and the type of road used, etc, all fed back via the over the air updates and SOS systems etc. So it would seem that Vloggers on YT were not quite the tin foil hat wearers and conspiracists that they have been / were called? They had the balls to call it out because they did not have to follow the narrative. The Department for Transport tracked EV drivers using their mobile data

That is just rubbish, if you need to do the miles then you need the fuel. You cannot make 60% of the fuel do the same miles. Those magic mushrooms are pulling the wool over your eyes again. 🤣🤣

That reduction would still make it 78p per KWh, ouch.

That was so well publicised that it seems that the local media sources were unaware of it. What actually happened, I suspect, is that they made all RHS members aware of it in an attempt to attract more of them to visit the site to increase revenue. Yes there has been a slow increase in the number of public chargers, all of which I have seen are low power. Local 12 shops and a large doctors surgery share 14 parking spaces between. They have just made 2 of those spaces EV-only with charging bollards installed so 2 cars can charge and I have yet to see a car being charged. Considering the ultimate aim is to get as many of us out of our cars and into PT, there is massive work to be done there as well. Last week I had to take my car in to have the AC fixed. The garage was 2.5 miles away and took just 11 minutes driving there. Had to leave the car, was told it would there all day, so needed to get home again. Walked to the bus stop, get a bus into the centre to catch the bus going near to home; length of route: 4 miles, 1 hr 25 minutes. Thirty minutes later, the phone rang, telling me the car was done (damn and blast) Off I go again back to collect it, this time it took 1 hr 15 minutes, cost was zero (free OAP card) but would have normally been £12 for the 4 buses. So thats 2 hrs 30 minutes for a trip would only taken 22 minutes by car. And this is supposed to be the future??

Not quite electric cars, but closely related, the much heralded Aberdeen hydrogen bus fleet is to be scrapped just 4 years after they were introduced. How many millions of £ have been wasted chasing this clean air dream? I had already previously demonstrated that the air quality was pretty good anyway. Why has the world's first hydrogen double-decker fleet failed? - BBC News

Nope, the town of Monmouth is just inside the border; it is not in the centre of Monmouthshire.

Well done Dave takes it on, finally exposed what we all knew,